High above them, Bloat giggled. “Welcome to the Rox.”
“Governor,” Hartmann said politely. “Thank you for seeing us. We’ve come in the name of peace.”
“Peace?” the stagman said. He had a deep voice and a British accent. “You mean surrender.”
“…My children…” Father Squid began, spreading his hands.
The stagman moved forward, cloven hooves ringing on stone. “Bugger that,” he interrupted. “We’re not your bloody children.”
Father Squid’s voice was drowned out in a chorus of obscenities.
Hartmann appealed to Bloat. “You agreed to this peace conference, Governor. The least you can do is hear us out.”
The cockroach stepped toward the senator. “The governor knows everything you have to say. You can’t lie to him. You can’t keep secrets.”
Bloat giggled. “Yes, Senator,” he said to Hartmann, “the smell in here is appalling. Even in my throne room, there’s no escaping bloatblack. Especially in my throne room.”
The shell had its own air-conditioning. Tom couldn’t smell a thing. But Hartmann paled and hesitated for a moment.
“Go on,” Bloat urged. “Wrinkle your nose, you want to. Use your handkerchief if you must. Silk, isn’t it?”
Hartmann had actually started to pull out the handkerchief tucked in his breast pocket, but now he froze. Tom heard scattered laughter at the senator’s discomfiture. “Governor,” Father Squid said, “think of your people. Of the price they’ll pay if this mission fails.”
Hartmann tried to recover himself. He took out the handkerchief after all, mopped at his forehead. “You may know what we’re going to say,” he said loudly to Bloat. He looked around the vast room at the sea of joker faces. “But your people have the right to hear our terms for themselves. Don’t they?”
One of the jumpers spoke up. “You’re offering amnesty?”
“Full and unconditional,” Hartmann replied. He tried to tuck the handkerchief back into his breast pocket, and missed. It fluttered lightly to the floor. Hartmann ignored it. “Forgiveness for all past crimes, regardless.”
’You guarantee it?” another jumper asked.
“You have my word, and the solemn pledge of the United States government,” Hartmann declared.
Several of the jumpers exchanged glances.
Bloat tittered. “Oh, that’s good, Senator. That’s very good.” He giggled again. “So your government will forgive us all for being criminals. Well, that’s fine for our jumper friends. But tell me. Senator. My people would like to know.” He took a long dramatic pause. “Who’s going to forgive us for being jokers?”
The silence in the hail was profound.
“Yeah,” Bloat said smugly. “That’s what I thought.”
Tom could feel the tension in the pit of his stomach. He turned his exterior volume all the way up. But Bloat spoke up before Tom could find the words. “The man in the can’s got something to say,” he announced.
Tom pushed with his teke, floating up, until he was higher than Bloat, higher than the balconies, higher than the torch, commanding the whole room. He wanted them to look up at him. “THIS ISN’T A FUCKING GAME. IF YOU DON’T SURRENDER, THEY’LL KILL YOU.”
“They’ve tried to kill us before,” Bloat said.
“LISTEN TO ME. YOU ONLY HAVE TILL SUNSET…”
“Then we all turn into pumpkins, right?” a jumper put in.
“Then they send more soldiers,” the stagman said.
“NOT JUST SOLDIERS,” promised the Turtle. He had to make them understand. “THE AIR FORCE AND THE NAVY WILL HIT YOU FROM BEYOND THE WALL WITH EVERYTHING THEY’VE GOT.”
“Let them try,” the antlered joker said, “we’ll hit them back.” He stepped toward Hartmann and Father Squid, bent suddenly, scooped up the senator’s fallen hankie. He clenched it in his fist, raised it high over his head like a banner. “Five for one!” he shouted, his deep voice ringing off the rafters.
“Go on,” Bloat said, giggling. “Tell us about the aces.”
He’s reading my mind, Tom realized in panic. He’d known Bloat was a telepath, but knowing it and experiencing it were two different things. “THEY’RE RECRUITING ACES TOO. YOU HAVE NO IDEA THE KIND OF POWER YOU’LL BE FACING. CYCLONE AND MISTRAL, DETROIT STEEL, PULSE, ELEPHANT GIRL.” He was blanking. He licked his lips. “FORTUNATO.” He couldn’t think of anyone else. He lied. “J.J. FLASH, STARSHINE…”
“Flash and Starshine,” Bloat said merrily. “I can’t wait to see that.”
Fuck, Tom thought wildly. You can’t bluff a telepath. Another name came to him. “MODULAR MAN,” he blurted.
The whole Great Hall erupted into laughter.
Bloat jiggled and rumbled, pipe-stem arms slapping helplessly against his sides in a paroxysm of hilarity. The stagman was laughing thunderclaps. Jokers and jumpers on all sides were roaring and falling down. The penguin was twirling figure-eights in the air. Even the human cockroach looked like he was smiling. The dome overhead rang with laughter.
Tom’s eyes went wildly from screen to screen to screen. They were all laughing, everyone but Hartmann and Father Squid, who looked as baffled as he was. He didn’t get it.
“WHAT THE FUCK IS SO GODDAMN FUNNY?” he asked.
The laughter died away slowly, like the ebbing of a great tide. Out from behind Bloat’s immensity stepped a solitary, sheepish figure. A handsome man in a blue jumpsuit, with guns mounted on his shoulders. “Excuse me,” Modular Man said. “Senator, Father, Turtle.” He sounded as embarrassed as an android could sound. “I don’t know how to tell you this but, well… I met the enemy, and he is me.”
The jokers laughed at the Turtle, Father Squid, and Hartmann’s discomfiture; Modular Man looked as bemused and uncomfortable as an android could. Bloat made no effort to cut them off. He stared at the peace delegation and grimaced. Hypocrites, every last one of them — and one of them especially.
Bloat knew about Hartmann — he’d figured out months ago that the senator must be a hidden ace. Several of the jokers on the Rox carried painful memories of actions that were entirely out of character for them; old, loyal Peanut most prominent among them. And like Peanut, most of those jokers had associations with Hartmann; as with Peanut, the circumstantial evidence indicated that someone had manipulated them, had taken control of their actions for a brief time.
The information Black Shadow had given him a few months ago had confirmed that suspicion in Bloat’s mind. Bloat figured Hartmann was an ace “up the sleeve.” He also suspected that the ace had much to do with Tachyon’s betrayal of the senator at the Democratic National Convention. It all made sense. Bloat knew, but he’d never met the man, never had the opportunity to prowl through his thoughts.
What Bloat had found in the last hour was a stench worse than bloatblack, a deformity uglier than any joker’s.
Hartmann had been paranoid from the moment he entered the Rox’s boundaries, knowing Bloat’s reputation as a mind reader. The fear had made it difficult for the senator to pass the psychic barrier of Bloat’s Wall. Once forced through, his mind sagged open like a rotten fruit.
… can’t even think about Puppetman … he’ll know … can’t even think about it at all… but of course that only opened the gates of Hartmann’s memory. Through all the talk, through all the nice little speeches about how he had the best interests of everyone at heart, through all the entreaties for reasonableness, Bloat listened to that interior voice, those old memories.
A sickness, a charnel house of putrefaction, spilled out. Bloat had gagged at the taste of it in his head, unbelieving. This was Senator Hartmann, the hero of Jokertown, the almost-president, the friend of the jokers? This thing?